Kith and Kin

January 18, 2016
Early in Adams’s absorbing 11th mystery featuring former policewoman Naomi Blake (after 2014’s Paying the Ferryman), 18-year-old Leanne Bolter, a first-year student at a small Midlands university, is found eviscerated in her bedroom one morning. On viewing the mutilated body, Det. Insp. Tess Fuller can’t help thinking of Jack the Ripper. And yet Leanne’s flat mates, who were sleeping nearby, heard nothing the night before. The crime bears similarities to an unsolved murder that was investigated 15 years earlier by Det. Insp. Joe Jackson, who has since retired in disgrace. Tess consults Naomi, who once served under Jackson and might have insights into how he might have mishandled the earlier case. Tess soon must contend with a team from Internal Affairs reviewing her every step as she tries to suss out patterns and links in other unsolved homicides from around the time of the earlier murder. Fans of contemporary British police procedurals should be well satisfied.

January 1, 2016
A band of amateurs competes with numerous police officers to solve a grisly crime. DI Tess Fuller and her sergeant, Vin Dattani, are shocked by the scene they find at Penfold House, a student accommodation on Curzon Street in London. Leanne Bolter lies in her bedroom, slit from throat to pelvis and eviscerated, and none of her flatmates seems to have heard a thing. While Fuller, assisted by DCI Field, former DI Trinder, DS Cooper, and DS Briggs, searches for clues, Nathan Crow, protege of Secret Service agent Gustav Clay, inveigles his friend Gregory into a little sleuthing. Both Tess and Gregory have strong ties to Naomi, formerly Blake (Secrets, 2013, etc.) but now wife of Alec Friedman. Naomi's bored, partly because she was forced to retire from police work after losing her vision, partly because Alec is distracted by continuing education classes he's taking following a near-fatal car accident. So she becomes a sounding board for Tess and, to a lesser extent, for Gregory until the investigation threatens to disinter the Joe Jackson case. DI Jackson was Naomi's mentor until he retired in disgrace, in part for endangering Alec once before when an undercover case went bad. Jackson also investigated the death of Rebecca Arnold, whose murder bears striking similarities to Leanne's. But the more Tess tries to follow Jackson's footsteps, the more friction she sparks between Naomi and Alec, until evidence surfaces that Leanne and Rebecca may not have been the killer's only victims. Combining police procedural with elements of psychological suspense and spy thrillers produces a murky mess likely to please aficionados of none of the above.

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December 15, 2018
In their third outing (following Death Scene, 2017), DCI Henry Johnstone and DS Mickey Hitchens suspect that the bodies they keep finding are tied to East End gangster Josiah Bailey. The problem is, nobody wants to go on record saying anything about Bailey for fear of becoming the next victim. Flashbacks from 1928 back to 1918 reveal that Dalla Beany may be the key. When Bailey's men killed Dalla's husband, Dalla took her son and daughter back to the Romany community where she was raised. In late-1920s England, Johnstone's investigation keeps leading him back to the same camp. This engaging procedural may also appeal to fans of Marjorie Eccles and Jacqueline Winspear.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)